BRAND NEW USED CAR!!!!!

I'm going to skip the whole "been too long" because that is obvious and get to the meat of the issue.

Betty, my long-owned and hard-driven 1994 Subaru Legacy Wagon is gone.  Gone to auction after being traded in on Thursday.

Sol (or any word for "sun" in any language other than English) is the "new" car in town.















I had Diana (Hi Diana) go with me because she's good at finding vehicles. I'm good at finding cheap housing.  Also, she is good at peer pressuring me into just buying something.

Betty needed new struts all the way around.  1200$.  The struts were so bad that they were going to become a safety problem.  A few days after I got this news from the mechanic, something let go in the back end (Betty's, not mine) and made a noise that was sort of  "clang...sproing" every time the back driver's side wheel hit a bump.  I'm guessing something actually snapped.  That noise and the metal-on-metal screech of all 4 struts, as well as the delay and thump between pressing the gas and actually moving, were about to make my nerves snap.

I'm pretty sure I squeezed every ounce of value out of Betty.  I paid 5960$ net (after the cash payout from the insurance when the Toyota was totaled by that damn teenager with a cell phone).  I put out about 4000$ in major repairs over the years.  Notable repairs:  camshaft pulley shot off on the interstate in western Minnesota;  alternator went out on the highway to Pullman one day; various CV joints/axles/bearings; 1 or 2 brake jobs though never replaced the rotors just had them ground.  I got 1300$ for the time that chick hit the back end of Betty on an icy day.  I spent $250 getting the tail light replaced.  So that's about 1050$ free dollars to deduct from costs.
That makes a lifetime net cost (because oil changes and that sort of thing are assumed and I never did a timing belt, gasket, or pump of any kind)  of 5960 + 4000 - 1050 = $8960

For that I drove 208,000 miles.   My miles per dollar of purchase cost and major repairs for Betty is: 23.2
I have always shot for 20 miles per dollar so I was ahead but with a few major repairs (and there would be more than a few once we got started), I'd be behind

If I'd done the struts: 20.67.   One big repair after that and I'd be losing even more ground.

I also had been wanting side impact airbags (and I'm sure my passengers had been wanting ANY airbag), my windshield was so scratched up from a life on the road that I could barely see at night from all the glare, and my seatbelts have been damaged and technically illegal for about 3 years.  Never mind the water that flowed out from the bottom of the dash whenever it rained (that's been going on since I got the car), and the new leak along the top of the drivers side window.  None of these things actually made the car stop or needed immediate repair to get from point A to point B, so I hadn't done them.

I got $759 on trade in for my car.  That is deducted from the net outlay on the new car, but I haven't figured the full details on that yet.

I had to realize that I'm not going to get 20miles per purchase and repair dollar anymore.  I'm sure as hell going to try, but it is something to shoot for, not a guarantee.  I've been driving on borrowed time on the last car for a while.  You just don't know an engine and transmission are going to last that long, never mind the differential and the rest.   Betty must have been one of those cars made on the day when workers are at their peak of performance.

So, the new car.  2009 Forester with 44000 miles on it , roughly.  It's a certified used car with a warrantee up to 100,000 miles (total miles, not mine) and three more years.  I drive about 20,000 miles a year now so I'll about hit that.  This is the first time I've bought a car without going to a mechanic.  That is scary, but realistically, I had researched this "certified" business and thought it was too far out of my price range but it looks like it is a real thing.  We'll see.  This car was bought locally, driven locally, and so all maintenance records are with one mechanic, at the dealer.  I'm sure any problem will show up in the next 3 years.  It has some sort of extra warrantee for the first year or two; I need to reread the materials.    And finally, I did not sign the arbitration waiver thingy so I can sue their asses if there is a problem.

This is quite a bit better/newer car than I planned on buying, but I really wanted the safety features and I still had cash for the purchase.

The dealer...Oh yeah!.  The name of my salesperson is "Cinnamon Crabb".  She's very nice despite what had to be a nightmarish journey though her school years with that name.
The dealership checked my credit rating and based on that, gave me the car immediately.  I hadn't brought my title or checkbook with me because I figured I'd have to go clean out my car anyway.   Nope.  Based on my stellar credit rating (I'm in the 93rd percentile...only slightly lower than my Iowa Test of Basic Skills percentiles), they wouldn't even take the cash deposit I had brought with me.  I asked if I should get a cashiers check.  "No, we'll take your personal check."  OK.  I emailed a heads up to my bank that I would be writing a big check to a car dealership.  I drove home in the car and went back on Friday with a check and the title to the old car.  I had forgotten a couple of things in the old car so got those while I was there.

All very exciting.  Now...if only that hail storm last night had dented up the car I would have gotten money back!  Oh well.  Someone will put a dent in it eventually and I'll get money back.  I do not do cosmetic repairs.

That worked well with Betty.  If I'd spent the 1050$ to get the tailgate and bumper dents fixed rather than kept the money I would have gotten a whopping 50$ increase in my trade in value.  I might have gotten another 50$ if I'd taken off the rust bits and gotten a paint job.  The cracked windshield had pretty much no effect on trade in.  Once a car has that many miles and 18 years on it, cosmetic defects are nothing.

I just checked a loan calculator and I'm saving about 3000$ by not paying interest on a loan for this car.  That's 3000$ that I will immediately designate as going towards the next car purchase, planned for either 2022 (10 years of use) or 2027 (Sol will be 18 years old).

Why name it "Sol"?  Because I bought on Summer Solstice which was also a super hot sunny day AND it has an automatic sun roof.
Other accessories it has that I don't care about:
heated seats
audio controls on the steering wheel
alloy wheels
AC (which I did turn on because there is a warrantee on the transmission...more on that at another time)
remote start
keyless entry
a bunch of security stuff
reclining rear seats...they tilt back 4 inches so passengers can chill
CD player (that technology must be on the way out if I have it in my car)



Stuff  I DO like:
back seats fold flat
those safety features
continuous readout of mpg average for 2 different trips so I can work on my fuel economy (this has a bigger engine than Betty so I'm losing a few miles to the gallon, but they don't make the smaller engine anymore)
getting in the car and assuming I'll get where I'm going
getting 3 years to see what will break in the engine or transmission due to the warrantee
ipod connection thingy that I don't know how to use yet.


I'm waffling on the seat...it's not terribly comfortable so I'm going to have to play with that.  Oh well.  Aunt Marcie was right.  Also, my old car's seats were 18 years old (but surprising had no rips or stains) so I'm still used to the pains those gave me.  I'm sure I'll adjust.

Earth Day Film Recommendations

I think we all know that I like Earth Day. I'll be on the radio on the actual day and will be giving an Earth Day movie list...but you saw it here first (my opinion may change by the time I get to the station).

Documentaries:
Dirt (great documentary about the importance of soil)
The Real Dirt on Farmer John (great documentary about an eccentric midwestern farmer)
An Inconvenient Truth (obviously)
The Garden (about a community garden in LA)
King Corn (corn and what happens to it, check out Ricardo Salvador the best looking plant biologist out there...also brilliant)


Scripted Films:
Greenfingers (Clive Owen is a murderer with a heart of gold and a green thumb)
Silent Running (classic eco-film with a youngish Bruce Dern on a ship with the last plants)
Soylent Green (obviously)
Delicatessen (post apocolyptic black comedy about cannibalism (no other food left))
Brazil (it's me so you know this will show up on every list)
Lemon Tree (widow in Palestine/Israel loses a lemon orchard to politics)
Alamar (beautiful views of an ecosystem and culture that are not long for this world)


There are thousands more, but these are what comes to mind. Enjoy. Happy Earth Day

Too long!

I haven't been on lately. Other interests like starting plants, going to meetings, and listening to books on tape. So really, no good excuse.

I do have an excellent thrift store report! I am going to a formal dinner to support a human rights group in the next county north. It's fairly formal and I have no decent clothes to wear, though several gorgeous scarves thanks to an Aunt who traveled in Asia and picked up a variety of lovely silk shawls and scarves.

After an oil change yesterday I made the most of my time in the big city by going to a few thrift stores. At one I found BRAND NEW tan wool herringbone slacks by l.l. bean or similar. Still had the tags on. They are straight leg style which is best for me. There was also a dark brown silk shirt which is in the same part of the color wheel, but not matchy-matchy. I think it will work. A new formal outfit for a total of 15$. Woohoo! There were also columbia brand zip-off pants! They didn't have tags, but no spots, tears, wear or anything. I never buy these new because they are pricy and because they are made of artificial materials and I don't like to support that...BUT these are good pants and my other zip off pants are suddenly too small. They will work well when riding my trike since the ankle openings have a draw string so I can tighten them up and keep them out of the chain. Since they were 3$ I won't mind getting chain grease on them either.

Household Expense Book 1978 Pt. 3

I'm back! Was on vacation for a couple of weeks then catching up.

Another installment in this ongoing series:

Reminder: I was thrifting (shopping at thrift stores) last fall and found a budget book. One that you record expenses in each day and total up for the week/month/year. I knew it was old but thought it was blank. It was 25 cents. So I got it. I like to do a money flow check up once or twice a year so figured the 25 cent budget book would get me through about 6 years. Seemed like a good deal.

When I got home and was putting my purchases away (the budget book and a puzzle of a Cezanne still life, 25 cents) I flipped through the book a bit more thoroughly and found that a few pages were filled out.

It was done in September and October 1978. Quite interesting. I noted that I pay less in rent now than the book's owners (we'll call them "they") paid on their rent/mortgage in 1978. So, I thought I'd put the expenses in the blog and think them through in writing rather than just in my head.

Here goes:

Totals for the week beginning 9.25 (had to reconstruct the date from preceding and following entries):
Meats 45.00
Groceries 38.50
Dairy Products 4.50
School Expenses 2.00
Church-Charity 10.00
Laundry-Tailor
Drugs-Medical Care
Beauty Care 5.00
Household Help
Entertainment 35.00
Beverages 2.00
Cigarettes-Tobacco 10.50
Carfare-Parking
Household Purchases 10.00
Wearing Apparel 1.50
Gifts 7.00
Telephone 73.00 (!)
Gas 52.86
Electricity 15.17
Heat 5.61
Rent Or Mortgage 370.00
Insurance
Taxes
Auto Expense 73.00
Vacation

Additional Categories were added as follows:
Aldens 36.29
Penneys 10.00
Alarms 39.87
M.C 25.00
TV Guide 15.50

Total for the Week: 880.30 (wow!)

It appears that the "Gas" is being used to record "gasoline" rather than furnace fuel as it has a daily entry.

Spent a ton on meat and groceries again. I just decided to eat buckets of organic vegetables again and at today's prices I'm having trouble spending that much...even out of season and these folks are buying in 1978 dollars during harvest when stuff should be cheapest. Even assuming 4 kids. That's a great deal of money on food. Percentage wise it's not too terrible. Meat, groceries and dairy total is $88.00. 10% of the weekly budget. Of course the budget is skewed with a few monthly expenses like rent/mortgage.

Once Again, I'm a bit taken aback by the Entertainment cost of 35.00. What the hell was there to do in 1978 that cost that much? High class hookers? One for each kid?

The Cigarettes-Tobacco is 1.50 per day. Must still be smoking a pack a day.

One red flag as far as financial planning is making categories out of stores..."Aldens" "Penneys." Budgets do best when the categories are types of spending, not locations of spending. Did you buy clothes at Penneys? Is Aldens groceries? Clothes? Garden implements? This is the start of not knowing where the money is going. In a week or a month or a year, how will the author know what was bought at these locations? Whether the purchases were for home use or gifts?
What is "M.C"? What was bought there? For whom? Bad budgeter...no biscuit (also, no savings).
Another red flag is not recognizing "TV Guide" (I hope that's a yearly subscription) as an Entertainment expense. Making the entertainment budget a mind-boggling $50.00. Maybe the hookers wanted to know what was on TV. It doesn't really matter as it's still an entertainment expense.

One final red flag on this is the fact that the author never fills in the "budget for the week" column. Perhaps the point was just to track expenses for a while and then figure out a reasonable budget limit in each category. It's one way to go. Yet, making sure the outflow does not exceed the income is another goal of most budgeting and without having even a target total or a note of what the income is, makes it hard to keep a daily, weekly or monthly eye on things.

The weekly total, $880.30, equals what is often my monthly total 24 years later, minus various savings plans e.g. vacation, real estate, car.

Fruits and Veg...Thrifty?

OK, running a bit of an experiment here. Partly because I am a fat lard and partly to see if it really is cheaper in the mid-run to eat healthy.

We know it's cheaper in the short run to eat crap...the dollar menu is ...well.. a dollar. So if you can get one or 2 or 3 items and pack in 1000 calories you're going to feel more full and make it through the next several hours. However, by the end of day 2 of eating the dollar menu, you're going to feel like crap and realize that you'll ultimately spend more. BUT if you live somewhere without easy access to fruit and veg, without space and ability to store them (e.g. roach infested inner city apartment complexes are rarely near a good produce market and you can't store things without them getting ruined), then the savings of shopping for fresh fruit and veg may indeed NOT be there.

In the long run, when you consider health care costs it's always better to eat as healthily as possible.

But what about the mid-range. Weeks or months?

I'm trying to eat a minimum of 4 servings of veg and 3 servings of fruit per day. In the short run, I'm too stuffed with salad to eat much more at lunch so that is good. But, organic salad is not available in my home town and I'm only in the big city once every two weeks or so. That means that I run out of organic salad in one week and have another week staring me in the eyes. Organic salad is also expensive. Hence more root veggies. They are healthy, store well and taste good and are fairly cheap. I've also been buying...industrial fruit and veg at the local store. I could probably get over the pesticides but I really resent all the plastic packaging.

After 1 week in, I've spent more on groceries than before. But that is partly due to coming to the end of most of my winter stock of veggies other than the squash. Still have quite a bit of lovely squash. And partly due to not having enough stored whole or frozen fruit and being largely out of dried fruit. It was a bad year for fruit last year and it's showing. I have some slightly soft apples left but those need to be in a salad or cooked or they are pretty unappetizing even though perfectly consumable. A few dried pears left. And quite a bit of plum sauce...must find more uses for plum sauce.

I think when more fruit and veg is in season and if I can get the sprouter going again full steam, it will be thriftier in the mid range to eat lots of fresh fruit and veg.

Household Expense Book 1978 Pt. 2

Another installment in this ongoing series:

Reminder: I was thrifting (shopping at thrift stores) last fall and found a budget book. One that you record expenses in each day and total up for the week/month/year. I knew it was old but thought it was blank. It was 25 cents. So I got it. I like to do a money flow check up once or twice a year so figured the 25 cent budget book would get me through about 6 years. Seemed like a good deal.

When I got home and was putting my purchases away (the budget book and a puzzle of a Cezanne still life, 25 cents) I flipped through the book a bit more thoroughly and found that a few pages were filled out.

It was done in September and October 1978. Quite interesting. I noted that I pay less in rent now than the book's owners (we'll call them "they") paid on their rent/mortgage in 1978. So, I thought I'd put the expenses in the blog and think them through in writing rather than just in my head.

Here goes:

Totals for the week beginning 9.18:
Meats 0
Groceries 26.50
Dairy Products 1.50
School Expenses 2.00
Church-Charity
Laundry-Tailor
Drugs-Medical Care
Beauty Care
Household Help
Entertainment 31.50
Beverages 5.00
Cigarettes-Tobacco 10.50
Carfare-Parking
Household Purchases 15.00
Wearing Apparel 5.00
Gifts 7.00
Telephone
Gas 43.00
Electricity
Heat
Rent Or Mortgage
Insurance
Taxes
Auto Expense 0.50
Vacation

Total for the Week: 147.00

It appears that the "Gas" is being used to record "gasoline" rather than furnace fuel as it has a daily entry.

They did better on groceries this week! Looks like the main shopping was done last week with supplemental shopping this week. Another 1.50 in dairy. Either that's milk or this family eats insane amounts of butter.

Once Again, I'm a bit taken aback by the Entertainment cost of 31.50. That's more than 20% of the entire week's expenses.

The Cigarettes-Tobacco is 1.50 per day. Must still be smoking a pack a day. Is the current price of a pack of cigarettes still the same as the price of a gallon of milk? I don't buy either.

Their budget was lower this week but there still seem to be cash leaks for cigarettes and entertainment.

So today I was learning to pressure can. I'm pretty sure I've got it now because I doubt there are ANY more things I could have done wrong. I'm also pretty sure that I need to buy someone a new pressure cooker. It's not good.

There were three of us and we were under the impression that one person knew how to do this. BUT what we ended up without was a canner. So we borrowed a pressure cooker...without the canning insert. It was determined through unclear means that that didn't matter. It also seems the seal wasn't good and the thing boiled dry...long before we opened it so the bottom is warped.

The jars of meat didn't crack or anything, but I don't think they got up to pressure and therefore not up to temperature. Sigh.

It wasn't very frugal though I suppose gaining skills that are supposedly simple is ultimately frugal. However, ending up owing someone a pressure cooker is definitely NOT frugal. Though perhaps the lesson was ultimately cheap as I will trust my own instincts above committee choices from here on out and it's always good to be reminded to do that.

I did get to spend the afternoon, at work, in the company of two very amusing people and that is always worth it.